Saturday, July 03, 2010

Saving Your Seeds

Seed saving
is exactly what it sounds like: when your plants complete a full cycle and produce seeds, you can save those seeds to plant in your garden next year. Saving seeds ensures you have free seeds to plant next season, and you can sort of "play God" here... for example, if you only save seeds from your healthiest and strongest tomatoes, you will develop a cultivated variety of tomato that becomes your very own perfected heirloom tomato! They're also a nice gift to give or trade with fellow gardeners.

My boyfriend's grandmother saved her seeds, and this year I planted some of her Spider Flowers from seeds that were saved from seeds that were saved from seeds and so on. I like knowing that I'm continuing the tradition.

Every plant comes to seed at different times in the year, usually at harvest. In addition, each type of seed requires a different preparation to preserve it for next season. My first plant to come to seed this season is my chive plant, and that also happens to be the easiest seed to save!

Here's what I did:

I knew my chive plant was ready to have it's seeds taken because the small purple flowers on the plant had started dying and began to feel like dried flowers. Plus, if you look really closely, you can see the black seeds being pushed out of the flower.

The seeds practically fell out when I touched the chives, so all I had to do in this case was catch the falling seeds in a small airtight jar where I could store them over winter. Always store seeds in a cool, dry place, such as a drawer in the refrigerator.

That's it! But it's not always that easy. Just wait until I show you how to save your tomato seeds... it involves creating mold to eat away at the thick seed casing! And saving potato seeds? Well, that involves a blender and a potato seed milkshake. Seriously.

Saving seeds is important for our agricultural history as well. The Seed Savers Exchange is a non-profit group that takes seed saving seriously. In their own words, they are an "organization that saves and shares the heirloom seeds of our garden
heritage, forming a living legacy that can be passed down through
generations." The SSE tracks down seeds from all over the world and grows them in a preservation garden, growing 25,000 rare vegetable varieties to fight against the vegetables' extinction. Yes, vegetables can become extinct: in the year 1900, there were 8,000 varieties of apples being grown in America. Today there are only 700 varieties, and the rest are gone forever.

One more good reason to save seeds: If I don't collect them now, they'll blow around my yard in the wind and end up sprouting somewhere else where I don't want them! I'll just pull them up as weeds at that point anyway, so I might as well save myself the work.

Comments

You can follow this conversation by subscribing to the comment feed for this post.

Thanks for the information! My chives are just about to go into flower, and I wanted to find what information I could so that I could save the seeds. And it's so simple!!! I have a feeling I'll be coming back to your blog to learn more, in the future. Great, easy to read post.

Im not a big fan of Seeds of Change. They got BOUGHT out by M M﻿ Mars YES!- the candy bar company) . and since then, I bevilee they are going down hill, since they are corporate owned. On Seed Savers, I didnt have their catalog' vs Yearbook , so they﻿ were not mentioned. They will actually get their OWN episode, as its so important. Its on the list ..

My chive flowers have been dry for a month, and only now am I trying to separate them from the chaff! Do you have any tips? What size are they supposed to be? I'm sliding the flower heads between my fingers and this is releasing some seeds, but I'm concerned it might be crushing some of the seeds. Do you know how they are supposed to look? the seeds? Thanks, Rachel.

Hi Rachel, I don't think you'll be able to crush the seeds with your fingers, they're pretty strong! Look at the last photo above and you'll see the tiny black seeds in the glass jar. Since you waited a month to separate the seeds, it might just be that many of them have already fallen out of the flower. This is not so bad: The seeds probably fell directly into the soil below the plant and they'll most likely sprout next season. So as long as you don't mind them sprouting up in that spot, you'll be ok!

Hi! My name is Martina and I have a "farm" in my New York City backyard called FarmTina.

My definition of "farm" is really just a living space that brings together home grown vegetables & fruits, animals, flowers & trees, and concoctions that use all of these ingredients together... read more